All posts tagged ‘The Raven’

Rachel Cericola is sad that the holiday season is coming to a close. However, she did get the chance to test out the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe from GeekMom Patricia’s post, and it was a huge holiday hit. Otherwise, she spent the season sharing the love (and a cold) with her family. She’s looking forward to a better, more healthful New Year — and hopes the same for the entire GeekMom universe!

Ariane is looking forward to the new year, mostly because she feels so full from all the holiday eating. Time for some new year resolutions!

Rebecca Angel is full of chocolate and practicing for an upcoming gig on New Year’s Eve at Pauly’s Hotel in Albany, NY. If you’re upstate and looking for a fun musical evening, stop by! (She goes on around 9pm.)

Unexpectedly, Kris Bordessa has her entire family home with her for a week. The college kiddo is home and her husband has a surprise week off work. This means some projects around the house will finally get done. It also means that she’s not getting much writing done, so she’s giving herself permission to call it a vacation.

I’m a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe, so naturally I’d been looking forward to the new movie The Raven starring John Cusack. I just love John Cusack, and his casting as Poe seemed like rather a creative choice, if only because for once the role of a dark and brooding romantic figure was going to someone other then Johnny Depp.

This past Friday I saw the film, and to be frank I’ve got mixed feelings. It’s taken me a few days to digest my thoughts and sort them out into something coherent.

Ultimately I’ve decided that I liked the film, with some caveats. Director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) definitely delivered visually. The look is gothy without being heavy handed, and he managed to throw in some subtle trendy steampunk elements too. Cogs! Gears!

(Downton Abbey fans take note, Bates is the bartender during a scene in a Pub!)

Here’s the thing: If you are a Poe fan, well, we both know you are going to see this film. To heighten your enjoyment of it I have a tip for you. Imagine that this is Poe in an alternate universe. Just as Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter did not really happen in our world, so too is this Poe of a different plane. If you put that thought in your head before you see the movie, I think you will be fine.

At the very least it will help you accept the inexplicable goatee on Mr. Cusack’s chin, and his blonde girlfriend.

The film does a good job of mimicking Poe’s style of fiction in its portrayal of its own themes. It’s scary, no doubt. Scary with depth. Rated R, this is a film for date night, not family night. If you don’t like Friday the 13th level gore, then aside from some pretty intense flinging blood and flashes of wounded dead people, I think you’ll be fine.

Oh — there is that heart on the desk, but that was for anatomical research, so that doesn’t count.

Most of the more distasteful legends of Poe’s personality come from a man who was his bitter rival during his life, and who became, astonishingly, the executor of Poe’s literary estate after his death. This man, Rufus Griswold, devoted the remainder of his own life to destroying Poe’s reputation and penning a memoir full of outright lies and forgeries.

An early scene in The Raven shows terrible treatment of this same bitter rival, a scene that had me cheering and hoping for a script that was more sympathetic to Poe the man, as opposed to the legend. Surely a screenwriter who treated Griswold so unkindly would give us a more richly shaded portrait of Poe himself? I’m still on the fence as to whether we got it or not.

Quoth the Raven...

I suspect that over time The Raven will make it to my top 20 list of films that I like to watch again and again. With all its flaws, cliches and contradictions, this film has, in the end, stayed with me even days later. Cusack’s performance, while different then I expected, stands out in my mind. I’ve replayed bits of his moody monologues in my head. In that respect, The Raven lives up to its inspiration.

As I sat through a half-hour of trailers at The Hunger Games this past weekend, I realized how many geektastic movies are coming out this summer that I’m going to want to see. Seriously. It’s absolute madness how many geek-appealing movies are crammed into the next few months. I’m already behind, having not yet seen John Carter or Mirror Mirror yet. And since it’s not often an easy task to get out to a movie when you have small children, that means it’s time to make a list and start prioritizing! Bookmark this post with what’s coming between now and September, and let’s make a pact together to see as many as we can. Who’s in?

Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope (April 6)
This one came out a few days ago, but that means you’ve still got a chance to see Morgan Spurlock’s shot at a documentary of the con-fan experience.

The Cabin In The Woods (April 13)
I was lucky enough to see this at SXSW. As I told you then, don’t watch the trailer, but if you’re a Whedon fan, don’t let this one out of the theaters without seeing it.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits (April 27)
A PG rating for Hugh Grant’s first animated role means you can take some of your kids to this swashbuckling flick based on Gideon Defoe’s books. The cast also features David Tennant, Jeremy Piven, and Martin Freeman.

The Raven (April 27)
For the high school Poe nerds. John Cusack.

The Avengers (May 4)
May the fourth be with you… no, wrong movie franchise. Couldn’t help it. But this is really the summer blockbuster we’re all waiting for, isn’t it? And when I mean waiting, I mean four years since the first teaser at the end of Iron Man. No pressure, Whedon.

Dark Shadows (May 11)
Frankly, I’ll see anything with crazy Helena Bonham Carter being crazy. This Tim Burton take on the late-60s TV show looks fun, but maybe dollar-theater fun.

Battleship (May 18)
When I heard they were making a movie based on a board game, I imagined a two-hour long version of the old commercials. The trailer looks fun after all (and Alexander Skarsgård? I’m there…), but this movie better feature the line, “You sunk my battleship!”

Men In Black III (May 25)
Really? Sigh. But… who among us of a certain age doesn’t have quite fond memories of the first two? So you know you’re going to have to see this one too.

Snow White and The Huntsman (June 1)
I admit to derisively referring to this as “Snow Twilight.” The movie still looks good, as long as I can get over the casting. Or I could just see Mirror Mirror and call it good on summer doses of that particular fairy tale.

Prometheus (June 8)
This was originally meant to be a two-part prequel to Alien, but has become more of a same-universe story than a prequel. Still wouldn’t hurt to re-watch Alien beforehand.

Safety Not Guaranteed (June 8)
This movie based on a classified ad in The Copenhagen Post seeking a time travel partner (Know your meme!) was nominated for a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

The "safety not guaranteed" classified ad, from KnowYourMeme.com

World War Z (June 21) Correction: This one won’t be out until 2013.
Post-apocalyptic horror based on the book by the same name. I’m not a Brad Pitt fan, but I do like zombies and Matthew Fox. I’m making a note to read the book first.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (June 22)
Based on the novel of the same name, this can go only two ways: really good or really bad. There’s no middle ground in a Lincoln/vampire mashup.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (June 29)
Just in case your childhood hasn’t been sufficiently relived and/or slaughtered by movies in the last few years, here’s one more dose.

The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3)
Here’s how this reboot happened: “No Spider-Man 4? Whatev. Guess we’ll just start over.” But it’s Spider-Man, so of course we’ll all see it. The sequel is set for release May 2, 2014.

Ted (July 13)
The quantity I can qualify this as “geeky” is low, but it’s Seth MacFarlane as a talking teddy bear in the story-after-the-story. What happens when the lights go down on a delightfully warm Disneyesque animated flick? This. I saw parts of it at SXSW, and it looks hilarious, as long as you like bong-smoking teddy bears beating up Mark Wahlberg.

Total Recall (August 3)
By August, we may feel like we’ve seen it all before… comic-book reboots, eternal sequels… And a remake of Total Recall, this time with Colin Farrell instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger and no trip to Mars.

The Bourne Legacy (August 3)
Bourne movie #4, with no Matt Damon. But it’s not a reboot, and he hasn’t been replaced. It’s simply a whole different movie set in the same universe, but with no Jason Bourne. (I think we can safely put it on the wait-for-dollar-theater list.)

ParaNorman (August 17)
An animated movie with zombies and one kid who can talk to them. Oh, and the witches and ghosts too.

Whew. That gets us through the summer. And if you survive these blockbuster sequels, prequels, and remakes, you’ll be rewarded this winter with The Hobbit in December and (at some point) Mass Effect.

On this day in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born. In recognition of that day, Dakster shares comparisons to a character who was influenced by Poe’s work, Batman….

While taking English Composition II in college, I was given one of my most interesting homework assignments. My Professor asked us each to pick a story written by Edgar Allen Poe and find a movie that has all the same Gothic elements to compare it to.

I did things kind of backwards and chose my movie first, and then I found a story that had many of the same elements. For my movie, I choose Michael Keaton’s 1989 “Batman”. Despite the popularity of the newer Nolan Bat, I still prefer the good old classics. After reading what felt like dozens of Poe stories, I settled on “The Tell-Tale Heart”. I immediately saw some similarities. In my research of the Batman, I learned that the similarities I was finding in the two were not a coincidence. As it turns out, Batman and Poe have some real history in common.

To start the creators of Batman, Bob Kane and Bill Finger were sitting in Edgar Allen Poe Park when they came up with the idea for Batman. An ironic twist is that eventually some of Poe’s short stories would be the inspiration for themes that would recur in Batman’s adventures.

Edgar Allen Poe also created a detective by the name of C. Auguste Dupin. The character was known for his creative thinking and intellect. When the Batcomputer was first introduced in the comic book series “Batman: Confidential“, the original nickname for it was “Dupin” after Batman’s hero. Eventually Edgar Allen Poe and Batman would team up to solve murders in a five part limited series called “Batman: Nevermore“.

Here’s a chart showing some of the Gothic elements I found in common between the Batman movie and Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart”